


Retell the Tale, But Kinder

by clotpolesonly



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Kid Fic, Laura is a good big sister, Little Red Riding Hood is not a good story for young werewolves, Pre-Canon, Sibling Bonding, and Derek's not a bad big brother either
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 13:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16086965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clotpolesonly/pseuds/clotpolesonly
Summary: “Cub, what story did they tell?” Laura asked with a sinking feeling that she already knew the answer. “What book did they read?”Cora only resisted for a minute, squirming in Laura’s arms like she wanted out but not actually taking the opening Laura gave her. Then she collapsed against Laura’s chest and, in a very small voice muffled against her collarbone, said, “Little Red Riding Hood.”Laura sighed. “And the Big Bad Wolf.”“We’re not bad,” Cora said. “We’renot.”She sounded so stubborn, but her voice cracked and her back shuddered under Laura’s palm as she drew a shaky breath. Laura wrapped her up in her arms more securely, and this time Cora didn’t resist at all.





	Retell the Tale, But Kinder

**Author's Note:**

> this is not what i was originally planning to write for today's LHAW prompt, but my first fic attempt wasn't working for me. apparently i just really wanted H/C and sibling fluff so here's 2k of that!!!

Laura climbed the basement stairs with some effort; she was exhausted, enough for every step to be a feat. She was aware that it was mostly emotional, but it wasn’t exactly uncommon for emotional states to manifest physically, especially for werewolves. She was worn out and her brain hurt, so the rest of her hurt too.

It had been a productive training session, at least. Her mother had drilled her on controlling her shift for over an hour and she hadn’t slipped up once, which was more than she had managed during last week’s session. She was so tired that her thoughts were mush and she wanted to sleep for a year and a half, but she was definitely making progress. At this rate, she might manage to be a halfway decent alpha in a few decades!

She shook her head at her own dramatics as she finally made it to the top of the painfully long staircase and into the kitchen. Her dad was there, whistling as he chopped vegetables for whatever dinner salad he was making tonight. Laura dropped a kiss on his cheek as she passed him by, like she always did. He slipped her a carrot to munch on, like he always did.

The next flight of stairs was equally torturous, but it got her that much closer to her precious, precious bed, so she couldn’t be too mad at it. It took her past a number of other bedrooms first—unfair, she’d often thought. _She_ was the oldest so _she_ should get the closest room, right? That was the natural order of things—and she only made it halfway down the hall before something drew her up short.

Cora’s door was closed. Cora’s door was never closed. She was only seven and generally a very rambunctious and outgoing kid, always coming and going and dragging people in and out to play with her at every opportunity. Laura couldn’t remember ever seeing her door shut before bedtime, and even then it was a gamble if she would demand to sleep with it open that night.

Putting aside her desperate desire for a nap, Laura tapped on Cora’s door. When she didn’t get an answer, she pushed it open and leaned in.

Cora was curled up on her bed, arms wrapped tight around the little plush rabbit she had gotten for her birthday a few years ago. It had been her absolute favorite thing when she was five, but recently she’d taken to declaring herself too old for it.

“Hey, cub,” Laura said gently.

Cora didn’t look up. She had a little pout on her face that might’ve been cute if she wasn’t so unusually quiet and still. Now it was just concerning.

Laura slid into the room properly and dropped down onto the bed at Cora’s side. The movement jostled Cora’s position and she made a soft noise of protest. She still didn’t let go of the rabbit, and she didn’t react when Laura put a hand on her back.

“Hey,” Laura said again. “What’s up?”

Still nothing.

“Is something the matter? Did something happen?”

Cora sniffed and rubbed her cheek against the rabbit’s ears. Laura tried to think what had been on the agenda for her little sister that day. Saturdays were training days for Laura, but the weekend activities rotated for the younger kids. She thought she remembered something about the library.

“Did you have storytime today?” she asked.

Cora immediately shifted to bury her face in Laura’s thigh.

“Okay, I take it storytime didn’t go well.” Laura took Cora under the arms, hefted her into a more upright position on her lap in spite of Cora’s resistance, and said, “Tell me about it, cub. Did someone say something mean?”

Cora shook her head emphatically but wasn’t any more forthcoming. She was red in the face now, her pout edging into scowl territory, but Laura wasn’t fooled by the grumpy facade. Cora was very much like Derek in that she never wanted anyone to see her be sad. Angry was always a good cover story, but it never helped make her—or Derek, for that matter—any less upset in the long run.

If it wasn’t a confrontation with another child, then it had to be something else. If there was an obvious _incident,_ dad would’ve interrupted the training session to tell mom, or he would’ve at least said something when Laura had passed through the kitchen, but he hadn’t seemed to have noticed anything really wrong. But then, for all that he was the absolute best father on the planet, he was still human. He couldn’t just _smell_ when someone was hiding being upset, and he wasn’t always bothered by the same things that bothered werewolves. He didn’t always realize.

“Cub, what story did they tell?” Laura asked with a sinking feeling that she already knew the answer. “What book did they read?”

Cora only resisted for a minute, squirming in Laura’s arms like she wanted out but not actually taking the opening Laura gave her. Then she collapsed against Laura’s chest and, in a very small voice muffled against her collarbone, said, “Little Red Riding Hood.”

Laura sighed. “And the Big Bad Wolf.”

“We’re not bad,” Cora said. “We’re _not._ ”

She sounded so stubborn, but her voice cracked and her back shuddered under Laura’s palm as she drew a shaky breath. Laura wrapped her up in her arms more securely, and this time Cora didn’t resist at all. She burrowed into Laura like she did their mom, seeking the comfort of scent.

“Of course we’re not,” Laura told her. “No matter what any stupid fairytales say.”

Laura had always _hated_ fairytales for exactly this reason, and especially that one in particular. She remembered the first time she had heard it. The big, scary wolf in the woods, stalking the innocent little girl so that he could eat her alive. The sneaky, conniving wolf pretending to be human so that he could trick the little girl into being his dinner.

It had twisted her up so much, that story. She had been a little girl at the time, so eager to identify with the girl in the story. But she’d been a wolf too. A wolf “pretending” to be human, even. She’d cried all night because she didn’t want to eat anyone, and she didn’t want to get eaten, and she definitely didn’t want a huntsman to cut her open with an axe. She’d spent a half hour desperately trying to convince her mom that she there was no granny in her to rescue.

At least Cora wasn’t quite that hysterical. The tears had made their entrance, though, hot and quiet. Cora rubbed a chubby fist into her eye and looked up at Laura with that trembling lip that made Laura want to take her away to some different universe where nothing could ever make her baby sister look like that.

“Why do they say that?” Cora asked. “It’s not true!” A few more tears leaked out. “It’s _not._ Is it?”

Laura squeezed Cora hard enough to make her squeak and blinked back a tear or two of her own. “Oh, cub, don’t ever think that. There’s nothing bad about being a wolf, nothing at all.”

“Then why?”

It was a question Laura had asked herself over and over again for years, and she had yet to find an answer that really satisfied her. She doubted she would ever find an answer that got rid of the ache of having to ask the question in the first place.

“Cora, do you remember Aunt Carrie and her pet rat?” she said finally. “It had those beady red eyes and the wiggly tail and it made Derek _scream_ like a baby?”

That particular memory plus a finger in a tickle spot got a weak giggle out of Cora and she nodded.

“You remember how you thought it was so scary?” Laura asked. “With the red eyes and the tail and the sharp little teeth?”

Another nod.

“But she showed you how much it liked treats, and how it would do tricks, and how it squeaked when she rubbed its belly. She let you pet it and see how soft and warm and fuzzy it was. It wrapped its tail all the way around your wrist so it wouldn’t fall off your arm. It gave you a bunch of sweet little kisses. And you realized that, no matter how scared you had been before, it wasn’t really scary at all. Remember?”

After a long minute, she got another nod.

Laura ran her fingers through Cora’s hair, resting her cheek on the top of her head.

“Some people are scared of rats because they don’t know much about them,” she said. “If they got to know them, they would see how smart and friendly and sweet they can be, and then they wouldn’t be afraid anymore. But humans… They don’t always bother. Sometimes, when humans are scared of something they don’t understand, they just want to get make it go away as fast as they can.”

Cora’s hand twisted into Laura’s shirt, holding on tight. She said, “Mommy gives kisses too.”

Laura smiled. “Yeah, she does. Big ol’ wolfy kisses.”

“She’s warm and fuzzy too.”

“The warmest and fuzziest.”

“Then why are they so scared?”

Laura wished she could say honestly that she didn’t know. Cora was so young, she hadn’t even grown into her claws yet. All she knew was mommy’s full shift wolf cuddles, that her uncle could toss her so high in the air it was like she was flying, that her boo-boos were gone by the time daddy kissed them better. She hadn’t seen the things Laura had seen in her alpha-to-be training sessions, hadn’t had the history lessons and the warnings of how vicious hunters could be and the briefings on inter-pack politics and the horror stories of omegas who went feral.

Laura couldn’t admit that, no matter how much she hated it, she knew exactly why the humans were scared. So she said, “I don’t know, cub,” and was glad that Cora wasn’t old enough to tell that she was lying.

Then she dropped a loud kiss on the top of Cora’s head and said, “How about a better story, huh?”

Cora sniffed and sat up, blinking up at her warily. “What kind of story?”

Laura leaned in real close and said in a conspiratorial whisper: “Did you know that werewolves make the absolute _best_ dragonslayers?”

Cora’s eyes opened wide. “Really?”

“You bet we do! Dragons and werewolves are natural enemies. No one can fight a dragon like we can.”

Cora looked absolutely mesmerized by that information. She clutched the rabbit plushie to her chest and wiggled around in her seat to get more comfortable, clearly waiting for a great story. Except Laura wasn’t exactly a storyteller by nature. She was more of a _doer_ than a _thinker_ and making up bedtime stories on the spot fell firmly in the latter category. Maybe she hadn’t thought this plan through all the way.

She was saved from trying to stumble her way through a modified version of the Triwizard Tournament or something by a light tapping. Derek, still in his basketball shorts, was leaning through the half-open door, frowning at the salty tear scent in the air.

“Hey, what’s up?”

Laura had never been so relieved to see her secretly-nerdy, book-loving little brother. “Derek!” she cried. “I was just about to tell Cora a story. You know, that one with the dragonslaying werewolf hero?”

For a second, Derek looked absolutely baffled—probably because he did _not_ know any story like that—but a few very pointed eyebrow wiggles from Laura and comprehension dawned on his face.

“Oh!” he said. “You mean, Sir Romulus the Furry and the great dragon, Mudkip?”

Laura blinked at him. “ _Yes,_ ” she said gamely. “ _That_ is the one I mean. Why don’t you come tell it, Der? You’re so much better at the funny voices.”

Derek rolled his eyes at being unexpectedly drafted into something this silly, but he flopped down onto the floor in front of them anyway. As he started to talk, spinning a totally ridiculous tale of a werewolf knight sent into battle against a dragon literally made of mud, Laura cuddled the spellbound Cora and smiled to herself.

Maybe they couldn’t shield Cora from all the stories where she would get cast as the villain or the monster. But they could give her a few hero stories too. And maybe that could be enough for now.

**Author's Note:**

> [also on tumblr](http://clotpolesonly.tumblr.com/post/178418973296/retell-the-tale-but-kinder)


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